Buffalo Triathlon - Olympic Distance - TriathlonOlympic

I've been working (alone) on my swim stroke with no real good idea if it's been working. My pool time is the same every time within about 10 seconds averaging 27:15. When I stepped on up on the sand and saw 25:XX I couldn't believe it. Swim went easy, sighing was awesome and didn't feel I was pushing too hard. Good start.

Need to practice starting from a run in position. I started swimming too early with people running and jumping around me.

Disaster. Last two tri's I wore a top under the wetsuit. This time I had no top on under and was going to put on a dry top at T1. For fellow beginners...don't do this. The top got bunged up and stuck on my wet torso and I burned at least 30 to 45 seconds messing with just that.

Wear a tri-top under the wetsuit

OK fellow beginners, let's discuss hill training. How many articles do we have to read telling us to do it, and how to do it? Answer...many. How many times did I take that good advice? Answer...none. I live in south MPLS and all my bike routes are basically flat. I know where the hills are to train on, but never did the work, and I paid for it. I was still in a "training day" mindset, but those rolling hills were kicking my butt. After 15 miles I was tired and mad at my evolving bike time, so I got out of training gear and started to kick it. It didn't hurt that the last 10 miles were more downhill than up, but I managed to make up some tenths. That stated, I paid for it with some pretty sore legs. So much for a training day.

I've read all the comments about traffic and congestion on the bike leg of this race. I must have sailed under a lucky star, because I didn't run into any trouble, even coming into T2. I'm guessing this had a lot to do with being in an early wave (wave 5).

Hill repeats in training. Might also be time to clip some aerobars to the bike.

That's better. Nothing extraordinary about T2, good or bad.

Hey beginners, should we come back to the topic of hills? That first 3ish miles was very difficult for me. Again, my fault. I read the previous race reviews and recaps, I knew this was coming. Did I train for it? Nope. Tweaked a hamstring on the first part of the hill before the turn around. Slowed down and evened it out, but at the turn around cone I was in a bad mental state. I've never been so close to the thinking about the word quit (not the same as thinking about quitting). If this course had not been an out and back with the second half mostly downhill, I may have been in real trouble mentally.

In a note to the race directors, no mile markers? Really? I thought maybe the volunteers at the various water stops and turn-arounds may have been briefed as to their position on the course. Nope. I finally chased down a guy in a Buffalo Tri-club jersey and asked him how far we had to go and was at last able to start doing some mental math. The mental math of pacing is what I tend to do to keep my mind occupied, so not having mile splits bugged me a lot, probably more than most others. If the mile markers were there and I missed them ALL, my apologies to the race directors.

Hill repeats in training

Walk to bike, pack up, go get some food.


Lack of hill training and experience


I've been using the website for well over a year and this is my first contribution. I feel I may finally have things to share with other novice folks. To that audience, this is a good race to put on the calendar. It's early in the season, which keeps you moving in winter. It contains reasonable hills which keep you honest but don't kill you. It's a big event but not huge, so just the right amount of "what the hell am I doing" mixed with folks to answer that question. It's not overwhelmingly big (my last tri was Chicago(sprint), it gave me some perspective). If you're new and going to do this race, pay attention to the other posts about biking and get out of the way for faster riders. Overall it's a good event.

I was much faster than expected overall. I beat last year's Olympic goal time and have set a new bar for myself. I guess that's what's supposed to happen as you do a few more of these events. Thank you to the organizers and volunteers for giving me a fun and successful day.